“And likely anything else that will make him a profit,” he assured her, worming his way into the folds of the fresh shirt. “Your potential employer appears to be one of the biggest smugglers in the Carolinas, according to one Monsieur Faucette, who dabbles himself.”

“But Lord John thinks he’s a loyal Tory—Brumby, I mean.”

“He may actually be a Tory,” Roger said, turning back a cuff. “Though his loyalty is quite possibly open to question. We don’t know what he was planning to do with the guns, once he got them—but it isn’t likely that the British army is depending on Brumby to get them arms.”

Bree poured water into the ewer and handed him a towel, then closed the trunk lid and sat on it, watching as he swabbed sand and salt and the dust of Charles Town from his face and dried his loosened, sweat-soaked hair.

“So you’re saying the guns you and Fergus just acquired came from Saint Eustatius?”

“So says Monsieur Faucette, under the influence of a generous prompting of rum and gold. I don’t know how reliable information obtained by bribery may be, but I do know—or rather, Fergus does—that most professional smugglers are just that. Professionals, I mean; most of them aren’t doing it in order to support one side of the war against the other; they make money where they can, and often enough, from both sides. And as it happened, I’d given Fergus sufficient gold that he was in a position to grease Monsieur Faucette, who … er … facilitated a meeting between Fergus and the owner of a small trading vessel, who had just brought the guns to Charles Town from Saint Eustatius via Jamaica. Et voilà,” he ended, shaking out the towel with a flourish.

“Awriiiiiight,” Bree said, grinning. “So, if Mr. Brumby is really running guns for the Americans, at least we aren’t hurting him by stealing them to give them to Da.”

“I’m trying really hard not to consider the morality of the situation in any depth,” he said dryly, dropping the folded towel on the trunk beside her. “I’d like to at least make it through ordination before the Presbytery of Charles Town finds out about it.”

His wife made an obliging gesture, drawing her fingers across her lips in a zipping motion.

“So, what did you and Marsali do today?” he asked, to change the subject.

To his surprise, it was her face that changed.

“It—I don’t know how to say it, exactly.” She sent him a sidelong look, half puzzled, half ashamed. He sat down on a keg of varnish, leaned forward, and took her hand, long-fingered and cold, clasping it between his own. He didn’t try to say anything, but smiled into her eyes.

After a moment, she smiled back, though it was only a brief shadow at the corner of her mouth. She looked away, but the elegant, ink-stained fingers turned and linked with his.